Digital Preservation Policy Framework

A Policy Framework template to help organizations develop a high-level policy document that explicitly states the scope, purpose, objectives, operating principles, and context of the organization's digital curation and preservation program.

This document provides an outline for constructing a digital curation and preservation framework and offers a step towards identifying core components of a framework to encourage a community standard for organizations to use. The outline:

Points to the organization’s action plan for near-term priorities and timeframes

Specifies the approval and maintenance process for the framework

The framework includes an introductory section on digital curation and preservation followed by one section for each of the seven attributes of a trusted digital repository: OAIS compliance, Administrative Responsibility, Organizational Viability, Financial Sustainability, Technological and Procedural Accountability, System Security, and Procedural Accountability.

The outline for the framework is third version of a model document that was developed by the Digital Preservation Management workshop team to assist organizations in developing the high-level policy document that is necessary to meet the requirements of being recognized as a TDR (trustworthy digital repository). A model documents identifies and describes the sections of the document to be developed and provides examples of what to include in the section, adopting conventions used in the development of the Trustworthy Repositories Audit and Certification (TRAC) document released in 2007. This third version of the model document for the digital curation and preservation framework adds curation and updates the section descriptions and examples.
This model document reflects the findings of the Digital Preservation Management workshop curriculum development project (co-developers, Anne R. Kenney and Nancy Y. McGovern, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities); lessons learned in the development of similar frameworks for the Cornell University Library and the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), as well as samples of frameworks developed by organizations that participated in the DPM workshop, e.g., the Library and Archives of Canada, N.C. State Library.